CHURCH AS CONTRAST SOCIETY: A REVIEW ESSAY, THE

Encounter, Winter 2006 by Watkins, Keith

The church, therefore, is not polis, but neither is it merely oikos. It has a place, but that place has its center of gravity in the church's eternal home toward which it remains on pilgrimage. It is a gathering, but it is not therefore marked by a "fascist" binding-a homogeneous exclusion of otherness-precisely because the church must constantly receive itself as a gift of God who is Other in the Eucharist. The church is a body, but not just a social body, one of a genus of other social bodies which can be described and plotted sociologically. The church is the true body of Christ, a sui generis gathering which deconstructs the necessity of divisions between public and private, body and soul (271).

Cavanaugh discusses excommunication, indicating that through the church's history, and also in Chile, it has been a necessary aspect of church practice. "That the integrity of the church should be decided around the issue of participation in the Eucharist should not be unsurprising, given the logic of the Eucharist as that which both produces and demands the church's unity" (247). Excommunication should not, however, be administered indiscriminately, but only for "those kinds of sins which impugn the identity of the body of Christ....I am arguing, then, that the use of excommunication should not be extended, but rather limited to those sins which threaten the very visibility of the body of Christ" (247). In the Chilean case, those tortured and their torturers could not exist in the same church.

Bishops have the right and responsibility to protect the integrity of the church, and throughout history excommunication has been one of the most important processes for exercising their office. The question concerning contemporary Catholic politicians and their church is whether their support of abortion rights, stem-cell research, the death penalty, and "unjust" war "impugn the identity of the body of Christ." If so, then excommunication is appropriate, at least for the politicians and perhaps also for voters who support them. This would mean, of course, that prominent politicians such as John Kerry and Mario Cuomo would have to choose between two vocations-their participation in the life of the body of Christ, as manifested in the Catholic church, and their vocation to serve as political leaders in a multireligious nation. That choice may have been easier in Chile, where the reason for excommunication was state-supported torture, than in the United States, where public policy issues are more ambiguous.

The gist of Cavanaugh's exposition, however, is that Christians who belong to highly disciplined churches must adhere to their church's central principles in their public lives. If government service requires their support for policies that conflict with their church's teachings, then they would have to withdraw from public service or live in the church as sinners-perhaps exemplifying a new form of martyrdom. Today's widespread bifurcation of religiously inspired ethical practice and public service could not be tolerated. The church, and all who would remain faithful to her convictions, would affect society by the strength that comes from her unity in Christ and her ability to stand up to the state. The church would be a reactive or responsive society, determining what she will do in the light of what the world is doing.